International Journal for Dialogical Science
Fall, 2007. Vol. 2, No. 1, 287-316
Copyright 2007 by Carla Cunha
CONSTRUCTING ORGANIZATION THROUGH MULTIPLICITY:
A MICROGENETIC ANALYSIS OF SELF-ORGANIZATION IN THE
DIALOGICAL SELF
Carla Cunha
University of Minho & ISMAI, Portugal
ABSTRACT. The self is in a constant process of becoming that demands the construction of
“sameness” and identity throughout the irreversibility of time and changing experience
(Valsiner, 2002b). Thus, self-organization is the constant and necessary task of a changing self.
Occasionally, this dynamic organization may lead to recursive and inflexible patterns implicated
in a perpetuating personal problem. The “Identity Positions Interview” (Gonçalves & Cunha,
2006) was designed to elicit dialogical processes while discussing a personal problem. This
allows different dialogues to occur: 1) the actual dialogues from the interaction participantresearcher; 2) the imagined dialogues of the participant and others about the problem (e.g.
“What would your mother say about the problem?”); 3) the imagined dialogues between Present
and Future possible-selves (e.g. “What would the Future say to you?”). These different phases
were inspired in therapeutic techniques that call upon the perspectives of social others or
temporal movements as semiotic devices used to generate diversity and novelty in the present.
Following a dialogical framework, two case-studies are presented to illustrate the emergence of
novelty and difference and its regulation into recursive self-dynamics at a microgenetic-level.
This idiographic study has two aims: a) to highlight the dynamism of I-positions within the
Dialogical Self, and b) to depict the emergence of novelty, self-innovation and re-organization.
Keywords: dialogical self, development, microgenesis, self-regulation
Dialogical Self Theory (Hermans & Kempen, 1993; Hermans, Kempen & Van
Loon, 1992) has brought the important features of self-multiplicity and dialogicality to
the foreground of psychological enquiry. However, even in the midst of selfmultiplicity and dialogicality, the self is constantly changing and constructing
“sameness” and identity throughout the irreversibility of time and experience (Valsiner,
2002b). In this paper, we depart from of the assumption of human existence as a process
of endless becoming that extends the issue of development to the entire life-span (as
AUTHOR NOTE. The research presented here is being conducted under the supervision of
Miguel M. Gonçalves, University of Minho, Portugal. We would like to thank the editors for
their wonderful revisions, commentaries and suggestions that deeply helped the development
and improvement of this article. Please address correspondence about this article to Carla
Cunha, ISMAI, Department of Psychology, Av. Carlos Oliveira Campos, Maia, 4475-690
Avioso, S. Pedro, Portugal. Email: ccunha@ismai.pt
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ontological development). Furthermore, portraying the self as developing in time and as
an ongoing, self-organizing process (Whelton & Greenberg, 2004), we need to explain
how the self achieves order through fluctuation (Prigogine, 1976 quoted by Caple,
1985, p. 174; ) or, put simply, how the ‘self’ self-organizes (Lewis & Granic, 1999).
This construction of stability within ongoing change – self-organization – allows for the
construction of identity, continuity and self-recognition throughout the passing of time.
Therefore, being and becoming are not opposed to one another but are two related
functions (Caple, 1985). Thus, self-organization appears as a necessary task, with great
adaptive value to the self, since: 1) a system that self-organizes becomes more complex
and more able to coordinate interacting processes, 2) self-ordering allows for the
regulation of novelty and difference as it emerges, and 3) this dynamic stability
maintains a flexibility that allows for new levels of complexity to appear when
threshold points are surpassed (Lewis & Granic, 1999).
This brings the question of the balance between emergence, innovation and
stability to the core of theoretical and empirical enquiry in the Dialogical Self Theory
(see also Hermans, 1999a, 1999b; and Lyra, 1999). The present paper will reflect and
elaborate on these issues (stability, self-organization, innovation and change) and
attempt to achieve a developmental account of self-organization of multivoicedness as a
moment-by-moment process in the Dialogical Self with the illustration of two casestudies.
Searching For Development As It Unfolds In The Dialogical Self
According to Lerner, Jacobs and Wertlied (2003) and to Valsiner (2006), the last
decades have been characterized by a renewed interest in the psychological science
focused on the analysis of phenomena and interventions from an applied developmental
stance. This renewed interest has marked the emergence of what these authors call a
Developmental Science and this new approach to development has been influencing the
work we intend to present here. This movement attempts to merge different theoretical
approaches that conjugate in the same direction towards the study of human processes
of development (Valsiner, 2006). The Developmental Science aims to achieve a holistic
and explanatory understanding of human-developmental-phenomena-in-context,
integrating different levels of contextual, ecological and individual organization, in an
irreversible temporal and relational perspective (Lerner, Jacobs & Wertlied, 2003).
According to this conceptual understanding, human beings are taken as dynamic
organisms in their adaptation to the environment, always in the midst of self-innovation
and self-regulation (Valsiner, 2000, 2002a). In this sense, developmental research on
selfhood has to answer two interdependent and simultaneous questions like faces of the
same coin: 1) how do we change? And 2) how do we remain the same?
These are not new questions in psychological enquiry. The dilemma of “how
can I be the same as I was in my past?” has been present in numerous philosophical and
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psychological debates at least since the 17th century (Salgado & Hermans, 2005).
Opposing both traditional ideas of an essentialist and Cartesian self and the post-modern
relativistic stance upon selfhood, in the last years, Dialogical Self Theory (DST) has
been presenting an interesting alternative for the theoretical description of the self and
identity, addressing our inner-multiplicity while acknowledging its dialogical, relational
and socio-cultural features. The Dialogical Self, theoretically described as a dynamic
multiplicity of several I-positions in the landscape of the mind (each position uttering
and voicing a particular and subjective view of self-existence and the world), creates the
opportunity to account for our potentially diverse self-narratives according to a different
positioning in time, space and specific audiences (Hermans, 1996, 2001). This
alternative view on the self can also be framed within a dialogical epistemological
stance that conceives human existence as an existence of addressing others, establishing
intersubjectivity and relationships as the ground for selfhood development (cf. Fogel,
Garvey, Hsu & West-Stroming, 2006; Trevarthen & Aitken, 2001). In an attempt to
characterise the main assumptions of a dialogical existence, Salgado and Gonçalves
(2007) assume the relational primacy for human existence referring to the inseparable
communicational and existential unity between I and Other, since every process of
subjectivity is always grounded in intersubjectivity. Furthermore, following Bakhtin
(“to be is to communicate”, 1984, p. 287), if relationships are constituted in
communication practices, then the (inter)subjective process is revealed through
“dialogue – a simultaneous unity of differences in the interpenetration of utterances”
(Baxter, 2004, p. 4).
Dialogical Self Theory: Where Do We (Empirically) Go From Here?
The main area of research produced within the scope of DST has been interested
in portraying the several problems and objects of study as a product of a multiplicity of
I-positions assumed as implicated in some conflict, negotiation, tension, and dominance
relations (e.g. Hermans & Hermans-Jansen, 2004). However, the majority of studies do
not usually establish a developmental description of how these processes are handled
within the Dialogical Self. The field of the DST needs also to address the present
challenge of explaining how agency and responsibility is achieved in the middle of “an
assemblage of essentially unrelated fragments” (Richardson, Rogers & MacCarrol,
1998, p. 513), like the different I-positions that constitute our self-multiplicity. As some
critical voices within the DST have alerted (Valsiner, 2004), the crucial question of this
approach is not reiteration of the multivoicedness of the self, but attempting to describe
how the self achieves its dynamic structure, stability and consequent individual agency
within this multiplicity brought to the foreground by the ever-changing flow of lived
experience. In sum, we need to describe how, even in the midst of our innermultiplicity, do we recognise ourselves as the same as we were in the past and as
individuals. Other researchers have developed interesting approaches to this question
(e.g. Dimaggio, Fiore, Lysaker, Petrilli, Salvatore, Semerari & Nicolo, 2006; Lysaker &
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Lysaker, 2004; Neimeyer, 2000) but are concerned mostly with the analysis of (self)
narratives. However, most of these analytic methodologies do not focus on a momentby-moment account of how voices emerge and organize. Comparing to those inspiring
works, we attempt to further explore the microgenetic development of voices.
Thus, our main question is: How does the Dialogical Self deal with difference
and self-innovation facing a personal problem? This focus on development as revealed
in the flow of dialogue, led us to create a specific form of research methodology
particularly suitable for studying processes of self-innovation and self-regulation in the
organization of subjective experience as they occur moment-by-moment and in selfother dialogues.
The Identity Positions Interview: A Semiotic Tool to Facilitate Self-Innovation
The “Identity Positions Interview” (Gonçalves & Cunha, 2006) is a semistructured interview created in order to more faithfully capture the moment-by-moment
process of self-innovation and self-organization in facing a personal problem. In this
procedure, investigator and participant are interlocutors in a dialogical process and
become involved in a joint-activity process of co-constructing meaning (Hermans,
1999; Valsiner, 2001). Throughout the interview (see Table 1) the participant is
confronted with certain semiotic devices used to facilitate change processes in meaningmaking and self-innovation (as-if movements) in the usual perspective of conceiving
that specific personal problem.
As we can see in Table 1, the interview begins with the choice and brief
description of a participant’s personal problem which will be the topic of reflection and
dialogue. Afterwards, researcher and participant collaborate together to arrive at a
formulation of the problem in a brief sentence that contains the theme and the emotional
dimension associated to it (adopting requesting r-p dialogues to arrive at a clarification
of the self-perspective towards the problem). This sentence is then referred to as the
Initial Position throughout the rest of the interview (Phase I). In this procedure, both
researcher and participant are active participants in the exploration of deeper meaningmaking processes about the problem being discussed (adopting eliciting and requesting
dialogues). The interviewee is then confronted with a first evaluation procedure (Phase
II) that consists in rating the degree of importance and discomfort raised by the personal
problem at the present moment, on a scale from 0 to 10, and the degree of uncertainty
that was felt in those ratings (through the enactment of requesting dialogues). The
intention with the use of different evaluations throughout the procedure is not only
quantitative, but also qualitative. As a quantitative assessment, the evaluations work as
markers of difference in meaning-making, punctuating several moments in the
procedure; and as a qualitative methodological procedure, they work as an artificial
opportunity that the interviewer has to further explore possible differences in meaningmaking as the procedure develops. In this sense, these ratings are viewed as semiotic
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Table 1
A general presentation of “The Identity Positions Interview”
Types of dialogues occurring in the interview
Phases of the
Interview
and examples of eliciting questions or requests
I) Establishing
an Initial
Position towards
the problem
Enactment of opening dialogues between the researcher and the
participant about the problem (referred to as r-p dialogues): e. g.
“We would like for you to talk about a personal problem that
concerns you in the present.”
Enactment of requesting r-p dialogues: e. g. “We would like you
to formulate that in a specific personal sentence that has an
emotional dimension and that we will refer to as your Initial
Position.”
II) First
evaluation
procedure
Enactment of requesting r-p dialogues: e. g. “Please rate the
degree of importance that this situation presents to you in the
present, on a scale from 0 to 10.”; “Please rate the degree of
discomfort that this situation brings to you in the present, on a
scale from 0 to 10.”; “Please rate the degree of uncertainty that
you felt while elaborating the previous ratings, on a scale from 0
to 10.”
III) Social
Positioning
Phase
Enactment of r-p dialogues and imagined dialogues between self
(participant) and social (absent) other (referred to as p-o
dialogues): e. g. “What would your mother say to you about the
problem?”; e. g. “What would you reply to your mother, from the
perspective of your initial position?”
IV) Second
evaluation
procedure
Enactment of requesting r-p dialogues: Identical questions to the
First evaluation procedure with emphasis on the evaluation of the
present moment
V) First Future
Projection
Enactment of imagined dialogues between self and future self
(referred to as s-f dialogues): e. g. “Imagine that you can
dialogue with a positive future, ten years from now… What would
the present ask the future?”; “What would the future say to the
present?”
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Table 1 (continued)
VI) Formulating
a Final Position
towards the
problem
Enactment of eliciting r-p dialogues: e. g. “After this reflection,
would you change anything in your Initial Position?”
VII) Third
evaluation
procedure
Enactment of requesting r-p dialogues: Identical questions to the
First evaluation procedure with emphasis on the evaluation of the
present moment
VIII) Second
Future
Projection
Enactment of requesting r-p dialogues: e. g. “Please imagine
other alternatives in the present to this situation…”
IX) Fourth
evaluation
procedure
Enactment of requesting r-p dialogues: Identical questions to the
First evaluation procedure with emphasis on the evaluation of the
present moment
Enactment of requesting r-p dialogues, in case the participant
chooses to reformulate IP into a new Final Position (FP): e. g.
“We would like you to formulate that as your Final Position in a
specific personal sentence with an emotional dimension.”
Enactment of s-f dialogues from alternative perspectives in the
present: e. g. “Imagine that you are in this alternative now. What
would you ask a positive future, ten years from now?”; “What
would the future say to you, if you were in this alternative in the
present?”
devices that facilitate elaboration and expand meaning making processes and
generalization of thought (this was inspired in the work on rating scales by Wagoner &
Valsiner, 2005).
The next part of the interview is what we call the Social Positioning Phase (III):
the participant is asked to imagine several dialogues with significant others about the
personal problem. These dialogues with these social others are invoked in the form of
as-if movements, asking the participant to imagine the reactions and questions of
significant others about the problem being discussed. These (absent) social others are,
thus, invoked as audiences or as imagined interlocutors in the present interaction
between interviewer-participant and in the (inter)subjective communicational space.
Hence, this part of the interview entails the actual r-p dialogues occurring but also
elicits (preferably) imagined dialogues between self and others about the problem
(although some participants adopt reflective dialogues about the interaction self-other).
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In this sense, while performing the social positioning phase of the task, we
consider that the participant can assume different authoring positions in the elicited
dialogues. For example, the participant can talk about the perspectives of significant
social others about the personal problem (never leaving her/his position as an author of
what is being said, adopting a reflective dialogue) or act as-if he was assuming the voice
and the perspective of a significant other (transferring the authoring position to an
Other, adopting an imagined self-other dialogue). In the first case, the participant might
say: “My mother would say that I’m not worried” (note the use of self-reflective
speech), talking about an Other (the mother) but never abandoning her/his place as an
author of that specific utterance. In the second case, the participant might act towards
the researcher as-if she/he was the mother, assuming and uttering her voice and saying
“You’re not worried about this!” (note the use of direct speech).
This part of the interview, where the emergence of novelty is enacted while
generating different possible perspectives to address and refer to the problem, was
inspired in actual psychotherapeutic techniques that call upon the different perspectives
of social others as a medium to introduce difference and therapeutic change on the
dominance of a given maladaptive perspective (like the “experience of experience
questions” in narrative therapy – White, 1992). A second evaluation procedure is
introduced here (Phase IV).
The next phase is what we call future projection (Phase V) and (preferably)
involves the enactment of imagined dialogues between an imagined future self or future
moment (where the personal problem has disappeared) and the present moment
(referred to as self-future dialogues). Thus, the participant is asked to imagine himself
in a moment of his life when he no longer looked at the personal situation as a problem
or when he had already accomplished a positive resolution for it (in this sense, through
as-if movements an imagined self-future dialogue is elicited by the interviewer,
although some participants may engage in a reflective self-future dialogue). This phase
of the interview was also inspired upon some therapeutic techniques that facilitate a
future projection as a motivational tool to induce therapeutic change (like the “miracle”
question in Solution Focused Therapy – de Shazer, 1991). After the future projection,
the participant is asked to think if s/he would like to change her/his initial formulation
of the problem at this point of the interview (Phase VI). A third evaluation procedure
then follows (Phase VII).
Afterwards, the participant is confronted with a Second Future Projection (Phase
VIII) that this time involves imagined dialogues between a positive future and
alternative formulations of the problem in the present – these are more opportunities to
introduce self-innovation and change in the meaning construction concerning the
personal problem (also with the engagement in imagined self-future dialogues or
reflective self-future dialogues). A fourth and final evaluation (Phase IX) ends the
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procedure, addressing the ratings in the present moment. As a closing synthesis, the
interviewer always elicits a final reflection of the research experience.
Specifying a microgenetic methodology of analysis
We wanted to maintain this study within the scope of a developmental focus on
self-innovation and self-organization processes. Thus, this clearly placed our research at
the level of microgenesis (Diriwächter & Valsiner, 2006, also known as Aktualgenese)
since our intention was observing how the participants dealt with the moment-bymoment dialogical engagement with the interviewer, creating meaning and semiotic
organization throughout the different moments of the interview. This meant the
following research goals:
1) To describe the pattern of self-organization implicated in the personal
problem stated;
2) To depict emergence of novelty and self-innovation that might appear
throughout the procedure; and,
3) To characterize how the Dialogical Self regulates and re-organizes its
difference and innovation.
Hence, we developed a specific methodology of analysis as link between our
theoretical lenses and research goals. The temporal sequencing of observations needs to
take into account the intra-psychological processes of self-organization that occur in a
dialogical encounter with an Other and this placed us within the scope of microgenetic
methods (Lawrence & Valsiner, 2003). Microgenetic methods allow us to
systematically observe the phenomena in detail throughout its developmental movement
over time, with the goal of inferring the processes that underlie quantitative and
qualitative aspects of development and change (Siegler & Crowley, 1991).
First stage of the analytic process: Identifying the utterance as unit for (further)
analysis
The first stage of the microgenetic methodology we developed, involves the
systematic observation of the video-taped interviews and its transcription, later divided
into units of analysis. We selected the utterance as our unit of analysis because we view
it as theoretically consistent with the Bakhtinian notion of positioning and the
traditional notion of I-position in the DST. An I-position, at a microgenetic level, is
conceptualized in this investigation as an “event of the self” (Holquist, 1990) linked to a
“present-moment of lived experience” (Stern, 2004). It refers to a specific egocenteredness of experience in the Here-and-Now-I-System (Valsiner, 2000) and to a
particular temporal and spatial framing of subjective experience from which something
is communicated and uttered to an Other. Given this unrepeatable positioning of the self
in the flow of experience, selfhood processes can be conceived as a product of a
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polyphony of voices of different I-positions contrasting with one another and regulating
one another in time.
According to the purposes of this research, and for the microgenetic analysis we
have only selected some of the participant’s utterances that were considered pertinent to
achieve our research goals, namely:
1. Utterances related to the personal problem being discussed throughout the
interview;
2. Utterances related to a self-referencing about the problem;
3. Utterances related to an other-referencing about the problem;
4. Utterances made understandable to the researcher given what was said before,
after, or during the interview (This can happen when the researcher
questions something trying to seek clarification of the perceived
perspective and the participant agrees – e.g. Researcher: “So, it would be
something like: Professionally, I’m turning from an adolescent into an
adult?” Participant Antonio, case-study 1: “Yes” – utterance 7)
5. Other utterances, related to mere clarifications regarding questions of the
interview or unrelated to the former criteria, were excluded from the
following stages of the analysis.
Second stage of the analytic process: Microgenetic analysis of identified utterances
Afterwards, each utterance was analysed according to five dialogical
parameters, inspired in previous works of dialogical thinkers such as Linell (in
preparation) and Wortham (2001) to characterize that specific communicational act
lived in that particular interaction, namely: 1) the communicational agent (Who is
uttering); 2) the addressee that is being spoken to (Whom is being addressed in that
communicational event; such as, present, absent or imaginary interlocutors or
audiences); 3) the specific images of the self that are being communicated as the content
of speech (What is said); 4) the form of communication, referring to the manner used to
present specific images of the self towards the Other (How it is being said); and 5) the
intentionality of the participant’s communication (Why it is said), considered in terms of
bringing to the foreground an image of identification or of contrast with the
participant’s presentation towards the interviewer. In the intentionality of
communication we try to reflect upon the use of the content of speech: something can
be uttered to clarify identification or a contrast to the personal position (as so happens
through the use of irony). Throughout the development of this methodology, we
specified a more explicit categorization of these dialogical parameters, arriving at the
analytic categories presented in Table 2.
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Table 2. A schematic presentation of the analytic categories
for the microgenetic analysis
Parameters
Who?
Analytic categories
I as I
I as an Other (specifying this Other)
Whom?
Myself
The interviewer
Other audiences/interlocutors evoked
What?
How?
Communicated images of the self (through emotional content,
self-descriptions)
Self-description act
Other-description act
Future projection act
Why?
Identification process
Unidentification process
Thus, the microgenetic analysis of each utterance corresponds to classifying each
selected unit according to the following questions: Who? Whom? What? How? Why?
Following a bakhtinian approach to communication, these parameters are considered
relevant, since they enable us to specify discourse as an intentional and situated
dialogical activity between interlocutors and audiences, relating through signs and
socio-cultural practices.
Third stage of the analytic process: Identification of self-states and focus on repetition
This microgenetic analysis under these dialogical parameters allows detecting
repeated positionings of the self towards others (the interviewer and the absent or
imaginary interlocutors or audiences evoked during the interview), in an otherreferencing and a self-referencing dialogical movement. We assume these positionings
as self-states that are presented towards the actual interlocutor in that specific moment
of experience and communicational event, in the course of dialogue and interaction (this
is inspired both in the notion of presentation in the “storytelling-event” by Stanton
Wortham, 2001, and in the notion of “self states”, as clinically significant self296
ORGANIZATION THROUGH MULTIPLICITY
organizing patterns, by Mikael Leiman, 2004). These self-states emerge from the
microgenetic analysis into a mesogenetic (higher order) level of analysis and tend to
organize the multiplicity of experiencing I-positions, operating under the influence of
hierarchical signs that function as semiotic organizers of experience (Valsiner, 2001,
2002a, 2002b) – creating repetition and recurrence in the self, something that can be
paralleled to the concept of attractor (in Dynamic Systems Theory; Fogel, Garvey, Hsu
& West-Stroming, 2006). According to our conceptualization, the repetition of similar
self-states constitutes the pattern of self-organization involved in that specific personal
problem1. This pattern usually starts appearing in the initial definition of the problem
being discussed since this evokes the most familiar self-states associated with the
problematic experiences and keeps being presented by the participant throughout the
interview.
Fourth stage of the analytic process: Focus on process, difference and novelty
A new dialogical encounter with an Other and the confrontation with the several
tasks of the interview may facilitate self-innovation in the usual perspectives taken
towards the problem. We consider this stage of the analysis important to us since it
focuses on difference and novelty, the active ingredients of change, the way we see it
(see also Fogel et. al., 2006). If these novel I-positions become more differentiated and
more elaborated, in time, they might lead to new semiotic processes and new patterns of
self-organization. We would not expect this kind of differentiation in the course of a
one time interview like this; however, these change processes can be much more
common in successful psychotherapy cases.
Thus, in the final stage of the analysis we depart from the repetitive self-states
towards the problem and start focusing on difference and novelty appearing throughout
the interview, attempting to arrive at a developmental description of how these new
positionings are handled within the Dialogical Self. This implies the systematic
procedure of 1) detecting different self-states; 2) categorizing the dynamic processes
involved in the emergence and regulation of difference and novelty; and, 3) modelling
different developmental pathways to each of the participants. Then, we try to depict if
difference triggers either occasional re-formulations of established patterns (as an
accommodation of novelty through re-organization of the self) or forms of selfregulation in the Dialogical Self (resulting in the construction of “sameness” and
stability through time).
We rely on the theoretical description of several forms of dialogical relations
within the self, as described by Valsiner (2002a), to categorize how the Dialogical Self
1 The criterion of repetition of elements for the inference of relatively stable patterns has
been widely used in studies under the self-organization paradigm (e.g. Barton, 1994).
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may actively obstruct its transformation and change in a moment-by-moment basis
(impeding the synthesis and differentiation of novel I-positions), either by increasing
multivoicedness or decreasing it through monologization of voices.
Two Illustrative Trajectories of Self-Innovation and Self-Regulation
in The Dialogical Self
Case Study 1 - Antonio: “I am at the place where everybody arrives someday”
The participant2 Antonio (a fictional name) is a 24 year old male student,
currently graduating from university with a degree in Sports and Physical Education.
His interview lasted forty minutes. He chooses to talk about the transition to his
professional life, stating that “The beginning of my professional life is something that
makes me feel anxious” (Initial Position – utterance 8). We have to clarify that, in the
Portuguese language, the word anxious can refer to different or even opposing ideas: it
can be associated with the negative experience of anxiety (as worry and apprehension)
and/or refer to the positive experience of yearning and desiring something yet to come.
In the beginning of the interview, this anxiety is simultaneously associated to
ambiguous meanings, like the sadness of leaving behind an enjoyed, comfortable and
successful academic life (“But it is making me feel a bit sad because I’m leaving a kind
of life that always felt good” – utterance 12), the enthusiasm of embracing the
anticipated and imagined professional challenges to come and some apprehension
towards what the unknown future might bring. Antonio addresses this ambiguity in his
dialogue: “I feel…// It is that mix between being anxious and missing something…// But
the anxiety (as yearning) is bigger…” (utterances 20 – 22). In this initial part of the
interview, Antonio and interviewer agree with the choice of this personal problem as the
focus of discussion.
While performing the first rating procedure, Antonio presents himself as very
focused on this transition; almost attributing most of his attention to it (he rates this
situation in terms of importance with a 9, on a scale from 0 to 10). He also presents
himself as very comfortable while anticipating these changes in his life, rating minimal
degree of discomfort (a 2 from a maximum of 10) caused by this problem. He also
presents himself as very certain in his position (rating the degree of uncertainty with 1),
only reserving some uncertainties to what the future might bring.
2 All the participants volunteered freely to this research project announced in the university
campus. None of them was receiving any kind of professional mental health support or
medication nor considered it as necessary.
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Antonio’s Social Positioning Phase of the Interview: Looking at myself through the eyes
of the Other
When asked to imagine the perspectives of social others about the Initial
Position, the participant chooses to engage in dialogue between him and his father, and
several of his friends: B. (an older friend), L. (a male friend from his high-school years)
and V. (a female friend from his high-school years).
While imagining the reaction and the dialogue with his father, Antonio presents
himself as satisfied for arriving at this stage in his life and as a source of satisfaction for
this member of the family (which he considers an important role model). He stresses
that this achievement would be the cause of great approval from his father, stating the
relationship between these imagined voices in dialogue (his father and him assuming
the point of view of his Initial Position) as a supportive relationship.
While imagining the reaction and dialogue with his friend B., Antonio presents
himself also as a source of enjoyment for B., and imagines that this friend would
encourage him if they engaged in dialogue about this subject. He also presents himself
as privileged towards this friend, since he anticipates a more successful transition and
career in the professional world than B. had – a professional that did not have the
opportunity to graduate from college.
He also presents a very positive imagined perspective about the reaction and
dialogue with his friend L., a former colleague from high-school that graduated the year
before and is already working. He refers that L. also went through the same transition a
few months ago, and would understand what he is feeling in the present. He assumes
the voice of this friend, saying “Welcome! // I’ve recently arrived but I’m just getting
used to this new world. // You’ll see that this is a different thing, a different thing from
what I recently had.” (utterances 148 – 150) We can see that Antonio indirectly and
very briefly mentions, in the imagined dialogue with this friend, that this transition to
the professional world also carries some negative things, like the loss of the former
academic life that is going to end. However, he does not further elaborate this loss,
immediately moving his dialogue to a more positive view about this change, stating that
his friend would have a supportive reaction towards him and would be very pleased by
the fact that they will both be professionals and will carry their friendship into this new
stage of life.
Referring to his female friend V., Antonio states that he imagines that her
reaction, although from a feminine perspective, would be very similar to the reaction of
his friend L. He imagines that V., also presently graduating, would be proud of him and
that she would support him in this transition. He assumes the voice of V., stating “We
will both get through this, because I’m also going through this now, and we’ll see…”
(utterance 200). The imagined voice of V. also indirectly addresses some possible
problems in the future. However, following this, when Antonio was asked how he
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would reply to this reaction of V., he does not acknowledge any anticipated problems or
negative experiences, referring that “It is obviously also gratifying for me to see my
friends arriving at this place” (utterance 205). We will discuss this systematic
avoidance on elaborating the negative aspects of this transition further ahead.
In the second evaluation procedure, Antonio presently assumes this situation as
the most important thing in his life (rating with 10 the degree of importance), still
presenting himself as very focused on this transition. While referring to the degree of
discomfort associated to this situation, Antonio presents himself as very comfortable
with this (attributing a degree of 1, on a scale from 0 to 10) and very confident in his
position (attributing a 0 as an inexistent degree of uncertainty).
Antonio’s Future Projections in the Interview
When asked to imagine himself travelling ahead to a point in the future where he
successfully solved all of his concerns related to his transition into the professional
world and adulthood, Antonio leads us to a 10 year future projection, where he pictures
himself as married and a father. He reflects that the questions he wants to have
answered by his Future-Self are, after all, if his present enthusiasm has lead him to find
professional and emotional stability or, in a word, happiness. Being positive about his
Future-Self, Antonio imagines a confirmation of his positive expectations. In sum, the
good times he will go through, along with some less fortunate periods which would
only lead to better appreciating his positive evolution, would make him feel very proud
of his achievement throughout these ten years. In this sense, Antonio presents himself
as an optimist towards the future, as a happy and satisfied professional achiever, thus
confirming his previous expectations throughout the interview.
By this time, Antonio was asked to think if he wanted to change anything in his
Initial Position about the problem, and he declines this suggestion made by the
interviewer, stating that he maintains the same concerns about his professional future,
with the same emotional dimension associated to it, presenting himself as anxious
towards this transition to professional adulthood (in this stage of the interview, the
meaning of anxious becomes more restrict, referring to yearning this transition).
From the third evaluation procedure until the end of the interview, we witness a
stabilization of the ratings and an end to the deepening of the meaning-making activity
brought by the ratings. Thus, in the third evaluation procedure Antonio presents himself
again as very focused on this situation, attributing the maximum degree of importance
to it (a 10) with inexistent feelings of discomfort (a 0) or uncertainty (also a 0).
When asked to think about alternative perspectives towards the problem of his
transition to adulthood, Antonio presents two contrasting and opposing options of the
present. The first alternative he presents is referred to as “an accommodation” to student
life. This image relates to being one of those students that postpone the responsibility of
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finishing their studies on time, due to over-enjoying their academic lives and all the
parties and freedom associated to this period. He describes this alternative with a strong
negative view stating that, if he was in this position in the present, he would not be
confronting his responsibilities and would be living a way of life that was not adequate
to his age and enjoying it through means that were not earned through his honest work
and autonomy. The second alternative view of the present that he presents, also with a
negative connotation, is what Antonio refers to as “a precautious entrance into the
professional world” without the academic qualifications and specific preparation that he
now has and that he considers a needed requirement for a successful career in his
occupational field.
When asked to imagine a dialogue between these alternatives in the present and
a positive and successful point in his future, ten years from now, Antonio questions if in
the meantime he would have realized that he needed to graduate to develop a successful
career. He states that, since what is intended in the interview is to imagine a positive
future, he imagines that, in ten years time, he would have corrected these vocational
“mistakes” and found his right path through graduation. Nevertheless, he spontaneously
engages in what he considers a more “realistic” future projection, describing a negative
evolution in ten years from now if he would occupy any of those rejected alternatives.
In this sense, by spontaneously contrasting his present to these undesired alternatives
and their different evolutions, he finishes the interview maintaining his presentation of
someone who is certain and positive about his future professional success and who is
satisfied and proud of the present transition taking place in his life.
In the last evaluation procedure until the end of the interview Antonio, as in the
third rating, presents himself as very focused on this situation, attributing the maximum
degree of importance to it (a 10) with inexistent feelings of discomfort (a 0) or
uncertainty (also a 0).
A microgenetic look at some key moments of self-organization in Antonio’s case
Antonio generally utters from a self-reflective experiential position as a
communicational agent, talking about his present life and the transitions and
transformations that are occurring in it and his reactions to it. He rarely talks as if he
was an Other (as a significant or as a future other), seldom using direct speech even
when the interview explicitly invites the participant to do so. In this sense, while not
speaking as if he was an Other, he does not give an independent voice to these evoked
interlocutors, and he does not abandon an omniscient self-reflective position.
In the beginning of the interview we see him uttering some ambiguity about
these transitions in this life, since they leave him facing different emotions: sad for
abandoning the former enjoyed lifestyle, satisfied and proud for achieving a major goal
in his life (his graduation), anxious (both as apprehensive and as yearning) to his
professional future, and somewhat uncertain about his future opportunities. In spite of
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our expectations that the developments of the interview would lead to the introduction
and the emergence of different perspectives towards the problem and the facilitation of
self-innovation, the opposite pattern occurs. The social positioning part introduces
others as reinforcing specific perspectives towards the problem, always positive: I as
anxious, as yearning my professional future and I as proud and confident about this
transition… The Future Projection Phase again introduces a very positive perspective of
his view of the present and the alternative possibilities that are imagined, they do not
lead to more novelty but to the reinforcement of his optimism about the present. In this
sense, these Others (psychologically present as audiences or interlocutors) that are
invoked do not validate certain perspectives that he expressed in the beginning about
the problem. The focus on the problem becomes less frequent and less elaborated
throughout the entire interview. Instead of introducing self-innovation, these Others are
used as tools to reinforce a specific positive point of view, since they usually express
agreement with the dominant perspective about the problem and seldom lead to the
emergence of difference.
We thus witness a monologization of voices throughout the interview. This
might resemble what Bakhtin referred to as the action of a monological narrator as
opposed to a narrator that allows others to speak through him manifesting divergent
voices (as in the polyphonic novel). This case-study presents an illustration of how the
Dialogical Self can sometimes be so “monological” and distant from the polyphonic
metaphor in the expression of self-narratives.
We are even faced with the question of who is really speaking throughout the
interview. As this description of the interview tries to picture, after an initial and
somewhat ambiguous phase, Antonio consistently presents himself (or others toward
him) as very proud and pleased with this changing point in his life, satisfied with his
academic achievements and very confident and sure about his professional adaptation
and development. We hypothesize that this perspective is strongly related to a socially
expected discourse that constrains Antonio’s presentations towards a psychologist as the
interlocutor in this interaction (possibly perceived as an evaluator of his psychological
adaptation). This discourse of glorifying adulthood, autonomy and individual agency
leads to a general depreciation of negative feelings and an unacknowledged degree of
loss about the past and uncertainty about the unknown future possibly also involved in
this transition to a new stage of life. In this sense, we sometimes have the impression
that the agent is uttering a social dominant positive discourse (as an authoritative
discourse; Bakhtin, 1981, p. 342) that may not acknowledge or express the rich and
ambiguous subjective felt experience.
Nevertheless, we find some interesting moments of emergence of difference in
Antonio’s positive discourse and general trajectory throughout the interview, that we
would like to discuss further. Our interest in them is related to the fact that these
moments of emergence put into evidence some interesting specific forms of self302
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regulation of difference and multiplicity into sameness and stability of the presentation
of the self. As we will try to clarify, these are usually associated to Antonio’s brief,
implicit or indirect verbalization of some opposing or divergent voices about his
transition to the professional world that do not fit well with his more dominant positive
view and socially expected discourse about these changes in his life.
As we noticed earlier, in the beginning of the interview while clarifying the
personal problem that he wanted to discuss in this interaction, Antonio acknowledged
that he would miss his academic life that is now ending and this sometimes created
sadness. However, he minimized the importance of these negative feelings, since his
desire to proceed was much more intense. While stating this, Antonio presents two
different intersubjective positionings that seldom appear after: I as sad for abandoning
my academic life versus I as missing my academic life. These self-states are
immediately silenced in the dialogue, since he stops elaborating on them and finishes
the clarification of these perspectives on the personal problem abruptly, stating: “And
that is it!” (utterance 13). Afterwards, the interviewer tries to elicit further meaning
construction around this problem, trying to access the emotional dimension evoked by
the situation. Antonio then replies: “I feel…// It is that mix between being anxious and
missing something…// But the anxiety (as yearning) is bigger…” (Utterances 20 – 22).
As we can see, he presents himself as I as missing my academic life versus I as anxious
(as yearning) about my professional life, with the latest self-state (a more positive
voice) dominating and constraining the expression of the former (a more negative
voice). According to the several forms of self-regulation of dialogicality within the self
presented by Valsiner (2002a), this illustrates a relationship of monologization between
voices, as a form of expropriating a voice from expressing and communicating
difference within the self (this monologization has also been referred by Gonçalves,
Matos & Santos, in press, as a kind of hidden dialogism within the self).
Another interesting example of monologization and silencing of another voice
occurs several times during the interview. In the first evaluation, while reflecting about
the degree of uncertainty about the previous evaluations of importance and discomfort
associated to the problem of transition to an adult professional life, Antonio selects the
meaning of uncertainty and applies it to his future professional life, stating that “The
degree of uncertainty is also one (meaning almost inexistent), because I only have some
uncertainties related to what the future might bring, nothing else. // Anyway, the will to
go forward is much bigger than the uncertainties…” (utterances 57 and 58). Again, we
see the emergence of two opposing presentations towards the interlocutor or self-states
about the problem: I as uncertain about my professional future (a more negative voice)
versus I as confident about my professional life (a more positive voice), with the later
dominating the former. Antonio’s presentation of I as uncertain about my professional
future appears again during the second evaluation while rating the degree of discomfort
that is associated to the situation of transition to a professional life. He states that “This
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doesn’t bring me any kind of discomfort, it is just the uncertainty of having all this
willingness to enter the professional world and the possibility of not having
opportunities… // Although I know I have some, so the degree of discomfort is minimal.
// It is 0 or 1.” (utterances 222 – 224). Again, Antonio briefly acknowledges the
possibility of negative experiences in the future, but immediately shifts to another
positive voice, explicitly minimizing the expression of the negative voice about his
future.
As we can see, this personal problem implies a hidden dialogism between
several different voices within the self, that create a self-organizing pattern through the
process of monologization as the dominating positive voice regulates the expression of
the other negative ones, expropriating them through silence in the Dialogical Self (see
the illustration in Figure 1).
Figure 1. A tentative illustration of the general trajectory of Antonio’s interview,
representing the pattern of the multiplicity of voices (as self-presentations towards the
interlocutor) about the personal problem occurring across time.
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In Figure 1, the bold line attempts to represent the dominating voice (Voice A: I
as yearning my professional life) that becomes more elaborate and recurrent throughout
the interview, as a repeated presentation of the self through time. This voice appears
associated to a recurring pattern of self-presentation, pre-organizing and constraining
the expression of other voices (proto-voices). The relation of dominance of this voice
towards other proto-voices leads to the construction of “sameness” across time. Other
voices (proto-voices B, C and D) expressing multiplicity and divergent perspectives
about the personal problem and related to different self-presentations towards the
interlocutor (represented in a discontinuous line and with a blocked arrow), do not
become so frequent or elaborate and are silenced throughout the interview whenever
they start to appear. We label them as proto-voices, precisely by the lack of
differentiation and expression. In this sense, in the midst of microgenetic multiplicity
across time, the Dialogical Self creates its stability and unity.
Case Study 2 - Maria: “Nobody accepts the imminence of dying”
The participant Maria (a fictional name) is a 24 year old woman, with a degree
in Psychology, who chooses to talk about how the illness of her father is presently
affecting her life, stating that “I feel powerless and alarmed about my father’s health
condition” (Initial Position – utterance 16). Her interview lasted one hour and twenty
minutes. Her father had a series of previous sudden strokes that affected his general
motor ability and autonomy without impairing his cognitive skills. Even though his
health as been stable in the last two years (after the latest episode), Maria describes this
situation as a daily concern, something she cannot escape in her present life.
In the first evaluation procedure, she rates this situation as the most important
thing in her life (attributing a 10 to it) since she is constantly focused on a new possible
stroke and trying to induce behavioural changes in her father to prevent it. She
addresses her reaction referring that “It is a constant need to control his life so that I
can control my life” (utterance 25). She attributes a high level of discomfort associated
to this situation (rating it with an 8), although admitting a reduction of distress as time
distances the latest crisis. She indicates a minimal degree of uncertainty towards her
evaluations of discomfort and importance (although attributing a rate of 3 or 4 on a
scale from 0 and 10).
Maria’s Social Positioning Phase of the Interview: Looking at myself through the eyes
of the Other
When asked to imagine the perspectives of social others about the Initial
Position, Maria chooses to engage in dialogue with five people: her father, her mother,
the “red-haired girl from the house on the Prairie” (referring to the character Laura
Ingalls from the TV series “The Little House on the Prairie” – a strongly admired
character in her childhood), her first boyfriend (from her adolescent years) and her first
love (of her childhood).
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While imagining the reaction of her father to her powerlessness and alarm about
his health condition (her Initial Position), she assumes his voice (using direct speech)
trying to calm her down and stating that there is no reason for worries or distress. In this
sense, she presents herself as being excessively worried from the point of view of her
father. However, in her reply to her father, perceiving that her reaction is not being
taken seriously by him, Maria presents herself as even more alarmed and powerless.
She reflects further on this imagined interaction saying that, after all, she cannot
command his life by trying to decrease the activities of a dynamic person like him.
While imagining the reaction of the “red-haired girl from the house on the
prairie”, Maria says that this character would not feel so powerless like she feels in this
situation, because due to the fact that she lives in a world of fantasy, she would find a
way to solve the problem. This way, Maria presents herself as dominated by
powerlessness in this situation, contrasting with a “red-haired girl” determined to find
some kind of resolution. In her reaction to this, Maria states that “It is a situation… with
no possible solution, in spite of our determination and tranquillity.//” (utterance 74).
When imagining the reaction of her first boyfriend, Maria presents herself as
being supported by him while he recognizes legitimate reasons for her powerlessness
and alarm towards her father’s health condition. However, the perception of complete
attunement and understanding arrives solely from her mother’s imagined reaction, as
Maria explains that only both of them as being involved and implicated in the problem,
can share the same feelings. She further elaborates, saying that this support is related
not only to the confrontation with the illness of their loved one but also in the
anticipation of future change in their lives, in the imminence of his death or severe
impairment. Referring to this, Maria presents herself as someone who is forced against
her will in her confrontation with change and refuses to adjust or prepare for the
possibility of this negative event in her future.
In the last imagined dialogue with her first love as a child, Maria assumes his
voice (using direct speech) that says to her “Calm down, because it is a stupid thing
trying to predict something that might not happen in the near future… (…) And you
cannot lead your life so guided with that imminence, thinking it’s today, tomorrow or
the day after…” (utterances 108 and 110). And thus, in this moment of the interview,
she draws a distinction from the kind of support she perceives from her mother and
from her friends. In her response to this reaction, she expresses understanding of their
good intentions but also a clear divergence with these interlocutors, stating that
“Everything they say, I already now… // But I can’t do it, neither they…” (utterances
114-115) // Following this, and explicitly addressing these others, she says “Everything
you say… is impossible to achieve because nobody accepts the imminence of dying or
illness”. (utterance 118)
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In the second evaluation procedure, Maria maintains this situation as the most
important thing in her present life (rating it with a 10); on the other hand, she attributes
little difference in terms of the degree of discomfort (rating it with a 7 instead of an 8).
When the interviewer tried to elicit further meaning-making about this, the participant
justified this difference with a certain relief she was feeling as she kept on talking about
the situation. In terms of the degree of uncertainty, Maria presents herself as
increasingly more sure about her position (attributing a 1 to the degree of uncertainty).
Maria’s Future Projections in the Interview
When asked to imagine that she could travel ahead to a point in the future where
the Initial Position evolved in a positive way, Maria leads us to two future moments
projected ten years into the future. In the first projection, that Maria refers to as “the
more positive future”, she imagines herself as a mother, with a son who has a
grandfather, and as a fulfilled professional woman. The second future projection,
referred by Maria as “the less positive future”, is imagined as a moment when she is a
mother that had dealt positively with her father’s death. Following this, interviewer and
participant agreed on doing the future projection task twice, each one with different
temporal “destinations”.
Maria starts addressing “the more positive future”, asking if she would be less
powerless and alarmed by her father’s health condition; in turn, this future replies that
she would have lost her powerlessness, as a consequence of no longer needing to
control her father’s life. Afterwards, addressing “the less positive future”, she says she
would like to know what would be her reaction following her father’s death or the kind
of person that she would become after facing that experience. She does not actually
reply to this from the future; however, she admits, from the future, that these feelings of
powerlessness and alarm are useless since they cannot change the future or prevent the
loss of her father. Although she hopes that this future, including this sad experience,
would have helped her develop a more peaceful way of accepting the helplessness that
comes with our human lives. She concludes her reflection stating: “So, there’s nothing
we can do, and there is no need for constantly trying to control… (utterance 165)”
By this time, Maria was asked to think if she wanted to change anything in her
Initial Position about the problem (in a request for a formulation of her Final Position).
The participant starts elaborating her new perspective, explaining that she has been
trying to be less controlling and has been somewhat successful in her attempt to
diminish her alarm and powerlessness arisen by her father’s health condition in her
present life. She additionally clarifies this, presenting herself as someone who tries to be
less controlling and less afraid of the future, saying that, as time goes by, “… there has
been a growing conscience that control does not lead to anything, and that
powerlessness is part of our human condition. // (utterance 175)”. As a corollary of this
reflection, Maria reformulates her perspective towards the problem, saying that “I feel
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more relaxed, or at least I try… // and I’ve been more relaxed and less obsessive about
the future. //” (Final Position – utterances 179-180)
In the third evaluation procedure, Maria again assumes this situation as the most
important thing in her life (rating it with a 10) and with a high degree of discomfort
caused by it (a 9 in a scale from 0 to 10). Explaining the meaning of this rating, she
states “The discomfort caused by this… maybe a 9 since on one hand I am aware that I
need to be less obsessive and more relaxed… // But, on the other hand, there is the
feeling that it is impossible to achieve.//” (utterances 187-188). The degree of
uncertainty in this evaluation procedure kept being minimal (rated with a 0).
When asked to think about alternative perspectives towards the problem, Maria
presents several alternative reactions that she could have in the present towards her
father’s health condition. The following alternatives are announced: “being more
relaxed, and less worried about the situation.//” (Alternative Position 1 – utterance
193); “I’m not afraid of change.//” (Alternative Position 2 – utterance 196); and, “I’ve
become a less obsessive person or excessively worried about everything…//”
(Alternative Position 3 – utterance 199).
When asked to imagine a dialogue between these alternatives in the present and
a positive moment in the future (the second future projection task of the interview),
Maria asks the future if she has actually lost her fear of change (consequent to her
father’s death). Addressing herself in the present from her Future-Self, Maria starts
linking the alternatives and explains a developmental path in these ten years: in order to
become less afraid of change (Alternative Position 2), she would have become less
obsessive and worried about everything (Alternative Position 3) and then more relaxed
about her father’s health condition (Alternative Position 1), arriving finally at a stage
where she is not afraid of change or, in other words, she would have been adjusted to it.
However, she continues her dialogue with the future and departing from the less
obsessive and worried attitude in the present (Alternative Position 3), she asks the future
whether this will be possible. The imagined response from her Future-Self leads her
again to a more conservative position, as she says: “I think the Future is going to say
no, that’s it… // (…) I think the future will say that life, with all that it brings, will make
me a more relaxed and unworried person.// (utterances 208 and 210)”. Thus, she is
implying that only the confrontation with her father’s death will conclude the process
that will lead her to a more stable change.
In the final evaluation procedure, the participant maintains again that this
problem is the most important thing in her life (rating: 10), but associates it with a more
reduced level of discomfort (a 6 in a maximum of 10) and a minimal degree of
uncertainty in her position (a 0). When asked to elaborate about the interview
experience, Maria adds that talking about this situation in her present life helps her
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dealing with it in a more positive way, especially after anticipating positive future
projections.
A microgenetic look at some key moments of self-organization in Maria’s case
Maria starts the interview expressing that her position towards the problem, her
father’s health condition, elicits strong feelings of powerlessness and alarm in her daily
life. The future possibility of another stroke episode or her father’s death leaves Maria
confronted with a negative experience that she does not want to accept and that she tries
to prevent by controlling her father’s behavioural changes. In this sense, the problem
appears as a dynamic relationship between two self-states: I as trying to control my
father’s illness versus I as powerless and alarmed by the situation. The relationship
between these two self-states is maintained through a mutual in-feeding balance
between voices (Valsiner, 2002a) that creates a dynamics of monologization within the
Dialogical Self, since these are the only expressed and accepted voices (and actions)
towards the problem and create a dominating coalition of power (Hermans & HermansJansen, 2004) in the relation with the other voices, that are rejected and silenced.
Looking at the Social Positioning Phase, we may say that, the initial formulation
of the problem is maintained through the suppression and rejection of divergent
alternatives that become illustrated during that moment of the interview, as we witness
the expression of contrasting perspectives expressed by the social others. In this sense,
we witness a kind of clarification of the hidden dialogism involved in the Initial
Position and also an exploration of its negative field (or a counter-position in the A
versus Non-A relation; Josephs, Valsiner, & Surgan, 1999), since the majority of these
social others are expressed as independent authorial voices (using direct speech)
uttering and elaborating this divergence and difference. Moreover, they are addressed as
psychologically present interlocutors in the dialogue (since the participant uses direct
speech in her replies) even if with an explicit rejection of their points of view:
“Everything you say… is impossible to achieve because nobody accepts the imminence
of dying or illness. (utterance 118)”.
Thus, we consider that in these dialogues there are signs of dominance of the
initial perspective upon those opposite voices expressed by others specifically appealing
to a non-controlling attitude towards the future. Even though these voices are rejected
by Maria, while assuming these voices speaking through her mouth, she is facilitating
the emergence of novelty while, at the same time, exploring a different understanding of
how her powerlessness is being fed by her controlling attitude. More specifically, she
expresses the recognition of the mutual in-feeding between I as trying to control my
father’s illness and I as powerless and alarmed towards the situation.
In the future projection tasks, we witness a temporary process of dominance
reversal (Hermans & Kempen, 1993) since Maria assumes that a positive future is
associated with a less controlling attitude and that an adjustment to change implies an
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acceptance of the inevitability of loss. Therefore, she is addressing herself from the
opposite perspective, positioned in the counter-position: if the initial position is A, this
counter-position is Non-A. She decides to reformulate her perspective (in a Final
Position) integrating some elements of this counter-position. Namely, by saying that “I
feel more relaxed, or at least I try… // And I’ve been more relaxed and less obsessive
about the future. //” (Final Position – utterances 179-180), Maria integrates this less
controlling attitude into her new perspective towards the problem, confronting her fear
of the future and her powerlessness in her Final Position. Moreover, she seems to dwell
through different alternative positions in a somewhat fragmented way for a small period
of the Second Future Projection task until she stabilizes again in a return to the Final
Position. However, this does not mean that change has occurred, at least in the sense of
a stable and lasting dominance reversal of her beginning perspective. Maria herself
addresses this issue, positioning herself as someone who will change her attitude
towards the inevitable powerlessness of human life only after confronting her father’s
death in the future – something that she is not ready to assume yet. Thus, she retracts
herself in her changing perspective, returning to a more conservative (and somewhat
familiar) stance.
We present a tentative illustration of Maria’s trajectory in the interview in
Figure 2 (see next page).
In Figure 2, with the continuous black and grey lines (voice A and B), we intend
to represent the dominating perspective towards the problem presented by Maria in the
beginning of the interview. These mutually in-feeding voices expressing an initial
balance between I as trying to control my father’s health versus I as powerless and
alarmed by the situation, reject other perspectives that start arising through social others
(note the dotted line expressing proto-voice C that is not further elaborated or the
emergence of proto-voice D). However, with the future projection tasks and the
development of the interview, some voices become more elaborate and integrated into
an emergent new final position towards the problem, creating a new (yet unstable)
synthesis that breaks with the initial dominating voices (represented as the
transformation of proto-voice D into a more highly structured voice E). In this sense, in
Maria’s case, we notice some re-organization of the Dialogical Self.
Some contrasting remarks
In Antonio’s case, we view the effort of one I-position to achieve the
monologization of contrasting voices. As a consequence of this effort, stability within
the Dialogical Self is attained and is reinforced throughout the interview. On the other
hand, in Maria’s case, we witness an unstable balance between two contrasting Ipositions that create unity through a coalition of power (Hermans & Hermans-Jansen,
2004), rejecting other voices. At some moments of the interview, Maria seems to dwell
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Proto-voice C
Voice A
Voice E
Voice B
Proto-voice D
TIME
Voice A: I as trying to control my father’s health
Voice B: I as powerless and alarmed by the situation
Proto-voice C: as accepting future loss
Figure 2. A tentative illustration of Maria’s interview, representing the pattern of the
multiplicity of voices (as self-presentations towards the interlocutor) about the personal
problem across time.
and hesitate between different possible positions, resembling a decomposing polyphony
of several voices in another type of self-organization dynamics. Nevertheless, at some
moment, in both cases, we witness the monologizing effort of the dominant self-states
towards divergent others, involving a rejection of some difficult or painful kind of
experiences.
As these two case-studies show, unity and self-organization is a product of a
monologizing effect that occurs in a polyphony of voices. Although it can be achieved
in several forms, with one voice dominating others (as in Antonio’s case) or with a
dominating coalition between voices (as in Maria’s case), these monologizing dynamics
are always embedded in a power relation between voices. Hence, the dominating
voice(s) regulate other divergent voices causing suppression and rejection of difference
or silencing of the other. However, we do not see this domination in a negative way, we
consider that this a necessary task with a great adaptive value, since it facilitates our
decision-making abilities, presenting rapid forms of dealing with most of our usual
daily challenges and rejecting difficult or unfamiliar experiences.
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On the other hand, change is required when our common forms of selforganization do not help us deal adaptively with difference. In these moments, we need
to explore difference, as creative and divergent resources to address challenges that are
regularly found within us. In our view, re-organization starts appearing when our inneralterity is no longer silenced and is given a differentiating and differentiated
communicational existence. Hence, through this contrast between old and new, familiar
and alter, a third voice comes into being and is synthesized, integrating resources or
characteristics from the previous voices. This is what happens in Maria’s case, as she
starts differentiating an emergent voice through an appropriation of others’ perspectives
initially rejected but later integrated into her own position. This new voice (voice E: I as
more relaxed about the future), nevertheless still unstable, appears as a potential new
resource towards the problem since it is associated with a different emotional
experience and a different behavioural attitude.
Final Remarks
In this paper, we have tried to highlight and elaborate on some of the challenges
that the Dialogical Self Theory faces at its present state of theoretical and empirical
development. The problem associated with the continuity of the self and identity
construction through meaning-making processes in the midst of permanent experiential
change is of special interest to us. As change at an experiential level is brought by the
passing of time constantly presenting us with new moments of self-experience, the
construction of “similarity” is a necessary task with adaptive value, allowing us to
recognize ourselves moment-by-moment as one and the same person.
It is not our main intention to discuss the relative advantages of highdifferentiation versus low-differentiation of self-identity. Instead, we are stressing that
self-organization is a central feature of human psychological functioning and we are
focusing on its processual dynamics, as we think is needed in the Dialogical Self
Theory. The cases presented illustrate how we can depict self-organizing patterns on a
moment-by-moment basis and why it is justified to claim that, to the Dialogical Self
Theory, unity implies diversity (Salgado & Hermans, 2005). How we attain this unity
within the multiplicity varies as an idiosyncratic feature as is empirically described.
Thus, this analysis seems to support the idea that self-organizing dynamics are
many times fed 1) by monological processes that can constrain our multivoicedness; or
2) at other times are fed precisely by an extreme polyphony that blocks our decisionmaking abilities, given the paralysing multiplicity we may be facing (Valsiner, 2002a).
Self-organization preserves equilibrium between openness and similitude in order to
maintain its adaptive and developmental quality. If this is not the case, self-organization
can become a rigid temporal stability that can no longer be sensible to the richness of
our lived experience or be so loose that prevents the development of our relational and
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ORGANIZATION THROUGH MULTIPLICITY
communicational life (as in dissociative states or schizophrenia; e.g. Lysaker &
Lysaker, 2004).
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